re there any good advertising campaigns?

(Also check out: Just what is brand advertising?)

 

Of course. Let's see, there's .... and oh! yeah, that one with the, you know, thing.

And who could ever forget old what's it called?

Seriously, an advertisement doesn't have to be burned into a consumer's skull in order to be effective. What's important is whether or not you, as a consumer, did what you were told and bought, sampled, leased, rented, visited, attended, voted for or agreed with whatever it was we advertising geniuses decided you should do when you encounter the ad.

Most ads violate one or more of these rules The ad doesn't tell the consumer what he or she should do. The ad tells the customer that the product is great for entirely the wrong reason. The ad is woefully out of date or overplayed. A basically utilitarian product is pitched with pointless trendy effects. The ad is aired at the wrong time or placed in the wrong magazine. Face it, it's a crappy product.

Heck, just a seriously, it's quite often a good thing when customers don't recall an advertisement outside of its context. That may be unclear, so we'll put it this way:

Most of us can sign along to the words of many songs. But most of us also can't stand up on a stage and perform solo renditions of those very same songs.

No kidding, huh?

The reason we're Pagliacci in a crowd but Marge Simpson when going solo has to do with context. In the right setting, and with some decent prompting, we all do just fine. Out of context -- depending on our own wits, memory, and stage fright -- we crap out.

So, when a Chevy ad runs at 2AM, it's out of context. You ain't buying a car at 2AM, and you're not thinking much about one, either.

But that same Chevy ad, heard on the radio during rush hour, when you wish your ride wasn't some ancient piece of crap with a busted air conditioner and rust spots, and every other car on the road looks better than yours, and people appear to be clucking their tongues at you, if not laughing outright...

The radio ad is more likely to work because it's taken in a proper context.

Media buyers generally understand these rules (although not to the point of spending more money on radio than on TV). But advertising agencies refuse to recognize that much of the time, product recall is not a good thing.

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Consider the SUV (short for Sport Utility Vehicle, or is it Shitty Ugly gas Vacuum?)

With the notable exception of Dodge, SUV makers favor TV flights of fancy showing their big rigs tearing across the desert, surging across rivers, blasting across hill and vale, and ultimately perched atop some big rock.

Ads like those irritate the hell out of a lot of people.

Sometime soon, an SUV will cause an incredible level of newsworthy damage, such as knocking the Hanging Rock off its perch, squashing the World's Oldest Trout, running down a herd of Buffalo, or plugging Old Faithful.

Does a car manufacturer really want its big-ticket, high-profit SUV linked with environmental disaster? Apparently so. When the inevitable happens, every Montero, Expedition, Explorer and 4Runner 'wilderness' ad will end up crushing their sales.

What's especially pathetic is that 90% of all SUVs won't get any closer to the wilderness than a high curb in the mall parking lot.

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If you take no other thought away from this diatribe, remember this:

Most advertisements don't sell anything because they are seen or heard out of context. Either that, or they're just plain crappy ads.

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Just plain crappy ads -- such as the "Sale that never ends" -- are a different, albeit often concurrent, reason why ads don't sell.

Sometimes, crappy ads are so awful they become resoundingly successful: "I've fallen and I can't get up." "Our quality makes us last." "The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife."

(Okay, only the first ad succeeded despite itself. The others are still just crappy.)

 

Just what is brand advertising?